I’m feeling a little put out today. Why?
First we have a story from the NYTimes titled

New Demographic Racial Gap Emerges

It’s linked on Drudge and so will have wide readership. Now from the title, you’re thinking, sheesh – what’s going on? Are all the Blacks moving to one neighborhood and whites to another and Hispanics to another? No, that’s not it at all.

As a matter of fact, this article is basically saying that minority groups are increasing their percentages in this country and are disseminating throughout the country.
What it’s really trying to say is that older populations here are more white while younger populations are less white. (which seems like no surprise to me)

In saying so, it works to insult us older whites fearing that we will be unwilling to share our wealth for schools etc until/unless we can see how it will benefit us. Therein lies the crux of the article.

What else. Another Drudge Link showing an excerpt from Al Gore’s new book. Democracy is failing. Why? Al is pretty certain that the American people, because we no longer read newspapers and have the tv on during the day are a bunch of idiots and that’s why Democray is at risk.

Frankly I have to think that any excerpt containing such an elementary view of statistics (in the quote below) would have to be written by an idiot.

Radio, the Internet, movies, cell phones, iPods, computers, instant messaging, video games and personal digital assistants all now vie for our attention—but it is television that still dominates the flow of information. According to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes every day—90 minutes more than the world average. When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time the average American has.

ROFL. Besides the note below about averages I’ve been in homes where people have the tv going 24/7. Then there are others who never have it on. Either way, no home, a) spends a couple hours to get ready for work. Stop b) go to work. Stop c) turn on the tv and sit in from of it again. Stop. d) go to sleep. Stop.

Averages are not the numbers to use when trying to describe a population anyway. While poor Al bemoans the lack of readership of newspapers,

and yet today, almost 45 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers.

I continue to see what are best sellers at airports. Sheesh – there are tons of books out there on highly important subjects and biographies. Both left and right. They are getting sold.
Al might make it with the elitist crowd that likes to think they are smarter than most, but every day in my little prayers I’ll add a spot to say, “Thank you Lord for not letting Al Gore win that election!”.

Can I say a “Yeah, Right” again here? Interestingly, I think the author may actually be a reasonable writer, but is writing under the constraints of Saudi Arabian eyes. He also notes that whenever this problem with Islamophobia is brought up, the west re-directs the question back onto the rights of non-Muslims in OIC states. However he just throws it in there without much explaination.
It deserves more.

The ministers described Islamophobia as a deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance against Muslims

Der Spiegal writes about the feminist movement under Ahmadijinad. It doesn’t sound pretty, but at the same time it sounds strong. Somehow women that just want the same rights as men are being arrested for being threats to national security.

Over the past 10 months the Iranian security forces have “become more and more aggressive even as women’s actions have become more peaceful and more tame,” one activist, Jila Baniyaghoub, told Associated Press. “By tightening the noose on us, they are warning us that they will not tolerate even the mildest criticism,” she said.

In recent months Peyghambarzadeh and her fellow activists have been organizing a series of demonstrations across the country to rally against patriarchal laws and structures in Iran, including polygamy, unfair inheritance laws, and a lack of custody rights in divorce settlements. They have likewise been going out to talk with Iranian women in the streets, universities, schools and factories. They have also been active on the Internet, setting up a number of Web sites dedicated to women’s issues.

I wish them all the best and I wish our left would step up and spend more time supporting people like this and less time just fighting anything and everything President Bush.

The BBC has the story of an escapee from the FARC in Columbia. This guy had been held for 17 years waiting for a hostage exchange. He was held with 3 US intelligence agents captured in Feb. 2003. As he says,

Personnel monitoring Iraqi tip call-in lines have also been busy. Thousands of leaflets were dropped requesting information leading to the return of the Soldiers. The leaflets list telephone numbers for tip lines, and the information given is routed to units in the area.
Maj. Kenny Mintz, a native of San Diego, Calif., and the brigade operations officer for the 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), out of Fort Drum, N.Y., said the 2nd BCT’s participation in the search for the Soldiers is continuing by all available means.
“Right now our focus is on searching for the missing Soldiers, and we’re trying to isolate the areas where we think they could be,” Mintz said. “The (captors) don’t have freedom of movement; if they have the Soldiers, they can’t move them from where they are. We’re doing a deliberate search of the areas for the people responsible for the Soldiers we’re looking for.”
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, was the first to speak about the incident.

“Make no mistake,” Caldwell said Saturday. “We will never stop looking for our Soldiers until their status is definitely determined.”